50 Years on Front Lines of Agriculture Give Horace Godfrey Right to Dean’s Title / By James Hughes – “Fifty years on the front lines of agriculture give Horace D. Godfrey an edge on Capitol Hill in Washington, where he is known as the dean of sugar lobbyists.

“Horace has been involved in farm programs almost from their inception. He was barely 19, a farm boy from a large North Carolina family, when he went to work in the Raleigh office of USDA in 1934. By the time he left the Department 34 years later, he had worked his way up to national administrator of ASCS and executive vice president of the Commodity Credit Corporation.

“Since then, he has carried the banner of the Florida and Texas sugarcane growers in Washington. He is a principal architect of the current sugar program, and probably its leading advocate. It could not have a better friend.

— “Take dedicated researchers and extension workers, adding willing cooperators, blend in sugar factory interest, stir well with liberal amounts of funding to conduct needed research, and you have a prize-winning recipe. From modest beginnings — 1961 grower contributions to research were $4,000 — support for sugarbeet research has continued to increase in line with an increasing technology. Beet grower funding broke the $100,000 mark in 1975. The 1980 budget was $200,000, making total contributions about $1.2 million. “Much of the credit for the outstanding sugarbeet programs in extension and research in the Red River Valley and Renville, Minnesota, areas goes to the Sugarbeet Research and Education Board of Minnesota and North Dakota.